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For the second time in seven years, a highly visible and prestigious private institution has announced a decision not to increase tuition. In 2000, Williams College announced a tuition freeze for the coming academic year, and in 2007 Princeton University did the same. In both cases, the institutions cited substantial endowment gains as a central reason allowing them to hold tuition constant for one year. What are we to make of these episodic pricing decisions?

I can’t say I was surprised that some of the inquiries and interviews that followed my appointment in 2005 as the fifth president of Hampshire College, in Massachusetts, had to do with the fact that I arrived at the president’s house not with a wife, and certainly not alone, but with my partner of now 27 years. Of our nation’s several thousand college and university presidents and chancellors, an exceedingly small number are known to be gay or lesbian.